OVERSEAS MODELS
Italy and the Soviet Union were among the first to demonstrate the military possibilities of airborne infantry in the 1930s with a series of maneuvers held in 1935 and 1936. Though somewhat crude, in fact, the Soviet paratroopers had to exit their slow-moving Tupolev TB-3 transporters through a hatch in the roof and then position themselves along with the wings to jump together. The exercise managed to land 1000 troops through air-drops followed by another 2500 soldiers with heavy equipment delivered via air landings. The gathered forces proceeded to carry out conventional infantry attacks with the support of heavy machine guns and light artillery. It is interesting to note that among the foreign observers present was Hermann Göring.
Beginning in the mid-1930s, several other European nations followed suit. Germany launched a particularly aggressive program, placing it in the air force under the command of a former World War One pilot, Kurt Student. The German paratroopers (Fallschirmjaeger) were complemented by glider units, an outgrowth of the sport gliding program that develops flying skills while Germany was under Versaille’s Treaty restrictions on rearmament.
In 1940, Hitler had about 4500 Fallschirmjaeger at his disposal, organized into six battalions. Another 12.000 men formed an air infantry division designed as an air-landed follow-up to a parachute assault. The Luftwaffe (Air Force) had also a force of 700 Ju-52 transport planes available to carry these troops into combat. Each Junker-52 could hold up to 15 men with arms and ammunition.
The Soviet Union made the first combat use of parachute forces during the Winter War in Finland. At the beginning of the month of December 1939, as part of its initial abortive invasion, the Red Army dropped several dozen paratroopers near Petsamo behind the opposing lines. Apparently, Soviet paratroopers landed also, with machine guns, on the Karelian Isthmus, in the vicinity of Vilmannstrand about 70 km north-west of Viborg. The Red Army group of about 100 paratroopers were either killed or captured. Another report mentions a group of 200 Red Army paratroopers landing along the Finish-Norwegian Border, at Salminarji in the nickel mountains of northern Finland. After a short skirmish, all the members of this group were also killed or captured. Every Red Army tentative to drop paratroopers in Finland met equally disastrous fates.
Germany’s first use of airborne forces did not really achieve favorable results. In April 1940, as part of the invasion of Norway and Denmark, the Luftwaffe assigned a battalion of paratroopers to seize several key installations. The first group of Fallschirmjaeger captured the defended airbase of Sola, near Stavanger. The second group, an entire company, encountered its first defeat during the Norwegian Campaign. The paratroopers were dropped around the village and the railroad junction of Dombås on April 14, 1940, and after a five-day battle, the force was destroyed. During the German invasion of Poland in 1939, German Fallschirmjaegers were sent to occupy several airfields between the Vistula River and the Bug River. Although these operations were critical to German success in the campaign, they received little attention at the time, perhaps due to the much larger and bloodier naval battles that occurred along the Norwegian Coast. German airborne forces achieved spectacular success just one month later. One battalion breached Belgium’s heavily fortified defensive line during the offensive of May 1940.
In Holland, four battalions reinforced by two air infantry regiments captured three Dutch airfields, plus several bridges over rivers that bisected the German route of approach to the Hague (Holland) capital, and Rotterdam (Holland), its principal port. The airborne units held their ground in each case until the main assault forces arrived overland. The final parachute battalion, supported by two regiments of air infantry, landed near the Hague with the mission of decapitating the Dutch government and military high command. This force failed to achieve its goals but did cause considerable disruption. The last major German use of parachute assault came in May 1941. In the face of Allied control of the sea, Hitler launched an airborne invasion of the Mediterranean island of Crete. The objective was to capture three airfields for the ensuing arrival of air-landed reinforcements. Casualties were heavy among the first waves of 3000 men landed by parachute and glider, but others continued to pour in. Despite an overwhelming superiority in numbers, the 42.000 Allied defenders did not press their initial advantage.
Late in the second day, the Germans began landing transports on the one airstrip they held, even though it was under Allied artillery fire. After a few more days of bitter fighting, the Allied commander concluded that he was defeated and began to withdraw by sea. In the course of the battle, the Germans suffered 6700 casualties, half of them dead, out of a total force of 25.000. Allied losses on the island were less than 3500, although an additional 11.800 troops surrendered and another 800 soldiers died or were wounded at sea during the withdrawal.
The Allies decided that airborne operations were a powerful tactic, inasmuch as the Germans had leapfrogged 100 miles of British-controlled waters to seize Crete from a numerically superior ground force. As a consequence, the US and British armies would invest heavily in creating parachute and glider units. Hitler reached the opposite conclusion. Having lost 350 aircraft and nearly half of the 13.000 paratroopers engaged, he determined that airborne assaults were a costly tactic whose time had passed. The Germans never again launched a large operation from the air.
The first tactical employment of Marine parachutists came with the large-scale landing exercise of the Amphibious Force, Atlantic Fleet, in August 1941. This corps, under the command of Gen Holland M. Smith, consisted of the 1st Marine Division and the Army’s 1st Infantry Division. The final plan for the exercise at New River (North Carolina), called for Capt Williams’ company to parachute at H+1 onto a vital crossroads behind enemy lines, secure it, and then attack the rear of enemy forces opposing the landing of the 1st Infantry Division.
Capt Howard’s company would jump on the morning of D+2 in support of an amphibious landing by Col Merritt A. Edson’s Mobile Landing Group and a Marine tank company. Edson’s force (the genesis of the 1st Raider Battalion) would go ashore behind enemy lines, advance inland, destroy the opposing reserve force, and seize control of important lines of communication. Howard’s men would land near Edson’s objective and secure the road net and bridges in that vicinity. For the exercise, the parachutists were attached to the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, which operated from a small airfield at New Bern (North Carolina), just north of the Marine base. The landing force executed the operation as planned, but Holland Smith was not pleased with the results because there were far too many artificialities, including the lack of an aggressor force. A shortage of transport planes (only two on hand) handicapped the paratroopers; it took several flights, with long delays between, to get just one of the under-strength companies on the ground.
Once the exercise was underway, Smith made one attempt to simulate an enemy force. He arranged for Capt Williams to re-embark one squad and jump behind the lines of the two divisions, with orders to create as much havoc as possible. Williams’ tiny force cut tactical telephone lines, hijacked trucks, blocked a road, and successfully evaded capture for several hours. One after-action report noted that the introduction of paratroops lent realism to the necessity for command post security. Smith put great faith in the potential value of airborne operations. In his preliminary report on the exercise, he referred to Edson’s infantry-tank-parachute assault on D+2 as a spearhead thrust around the hostile flank and emphasized the need in modern warfare for the speed and shock effect of airborne and armor units.
With that in mind, he recommended that his two-division force include at least one air attack brigade of at least one parachute regiment and one air infantry regiment. (The term ‘air infantry’ referred to ground troops landed by transport aircraft – Glider). He also urged the Marine Corps to acquire the necessary transport planes. Despite this high-level plea, the Marine Corps continued to go slowly with the parachute program. At the end of March 1942, the 1st Battalion finally stood up its third line company, but the entire organization only had a total of 332 officers and men, less than 60 percent of its table of organization strength (one of the lowest figures in the division). The 2nd Battalion, still recovering from the loss of its first Able Co, had barely 200 men.
Manpower and aircraft shortages and the straight jacket of the parachute training pipeline accounted for some of the bottlenecks, but a lack of enthusiasm for the idea at Headquarters also appears to have taken hold. By contrast, the Corps had not conceived the original idea for the raiders until mid-1941, but it had two full 800-man battalions in existence by March 1942. The Marine Corps was not enthusiastic about the latter force, either, but it expanded rapidly in large measure due to pressure from President Roosevelt and senior Navy leaders. Without similar heat from above, Headquarters was not about to commit its precious resources to a crash program to expand the paratroopers and provide them with air transports. Marine planners probably made a real choice in the matter, given the competing requirements to fill up divisions and air wings and make them ready for amphibious warfare, another infant art suffering through even greater growing pains.
MARINE CORPS AIRBORNE DOCTRINE
On May 15, 1940, the Commandant, Gen Thomas Holcomb, wrote the Chief of Naval Operations to seek the help of his naval attaches in gathering information on foreign parachute programs. He noted that he was intensely interested in the subject. The Berlin attaché responded the following month with a lead on how to obtain newsreels and an educational film on the German paratroopers. The London attaché eventually provided additional information on the Germans and on Britain’s fledgling parachute program launched in June 1940. The Commandant’s own intelligence section had already compiled available material on the German and Soviet forces.
The report noted the distinction between parachutists and air infantry, the latter consisting of specially organized units trained and equipped to move by transport aircraft. The paratroopers acted as the advance guard for the air infantry by seizing the airfields upon which the transports would land. The report also detailed the different methods that the Germans and Soviets used to train their respective forces.
German paratrooper recruits went through an intensive ground school prior to making the six jumps required to achieve membership in a unit. The Soviet program featured the use of towers for practice jumps prior to actual training with a plane. When staff officers at Headquarters first looked at parachute forces in the aftermath of Fort Eben Emael in Belgium, they specifically considered the functions such a unit would perform. Their ideas were generally similar: paratroopers would be valuable for raids; for reconnaissance; for the seizure of airfields; for the aerial envelopment of the enemy’s rear area and, finally, for the occupation of key terrain in advance of the main force. Several officers specifically tied the latter two missions to the conduct of amphibious operations. Although the Corps’ amphibious doctrine had existed on paper for several years, the Fleet Marine Force was having a difficult time turning those ideas into reality.
During annual exercises, a lack of decent landing craft and transports had prevented the rapid buildup ashore of combat power, something the amphibious force had to do if it hoped to defeat counterattacks against its beachhead. Gen Holland M. Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Brigade, first tried to solve this problem during Fleet Exercise 6 in February 1940. A key part of his plan was the night landing of one company three hours prior to the main amphibious assault. This company embarked on a fast destroyer transport, would go ashore by rubber boat, seize key terrain overlooking the proposed beachhead, and then protect the rest of the force as it landed and got itself organized. This idea eventually gave birth to the 1st Marine Raider Battalion.
In the spring of 1940, it was obvious to a number of Marine officers, at Headquarters and in the FMF, that parachutism now constituted an ideal alternative for speedily seizing a surprise lodgment on an enemy coast. Smith explicitly would advocate that new wrinkle to doctrine the following year. The Marine Corps did not develop formal airborne doctrine until late 1942. It came in the form of a 12-page manual titled Parachute and Air Troops. Its authors believed that airborne forces could constitute a paralyzing application of power in the initial phase of a landing attack. Secondarily, parachute troops could seize critical points, such as airfields or bridges, or they could operate behind enemy lines in small groups to gather intelligence or conduct sabotage operations.
The doctrinal publication did not provide much detail on tactics, but the parachutists worked out techniques in combination with Marine transport pilots. The standard method of operations called for a terrain-hugging approach flight at altitudes as low as 50 feet, with a last-minute ascent to several hundred feet, at which point the jumpers exited the aircraft. The doctrine noted the limitations of airborne assault and emphasized that these forces could only seize small objectives and hold them for a short time pending linkup with seaborne or overland echelons.
The manual envisioned the formation of an air brigade composed of one regiment each of paratroops and air infantry, the type of force originally sought by Holland Smith. All leaders were thoroughly briefed beforehand with maps, aerial photos, and a sand table mockup of the objective so that they could quickly get organized and oriented once they hit the ground. When they jumped, the paratroopers carried the collapsible Johnson weapons or the Reisings, along with basic individual items such as a belt, knife, canteens, and ammunition. Cargo parachutes delivered heavier weapons and supplies. From early in the life of the program, planners realized that a lack of training facilities and planes hampered the ability of the Corps to field an adequate airborne force. They thus began looking at using parachutists for secondary missions.
In April 1941 the Commandant directed that parachute units conduct training in rubber boat operations, reconnaissance, demolitions, and other subjects to enable them to conduct special missions requiring only small forces or not necessarily involving airborne insertion. On New Caledonia in 1943, the 1st Parachute Regiment devoted much of its training time to such skills. In many respects, the Marine Corps had molded the parachutists and raiders into carbon copies of each other, with the parachutists’ unique ability to enter battle being the only significant difference between the two special units.
AIR TRANSPORT
The fate of the parachute program was intertwined completely with Marine aviation, inasmuch as the airborne infantry could not fulfill its function without transport aircraft. Although men could jump from just about any type of plane, tactical parachute operations required certain characteristics in aircraft. The door had to allow easy exit and the interior freedom of movement so that a stick of jumpers could exit the plane in short order; the ideal was one second per man. Any increase in the delay between jumpers resulted in wide dispersion once the stick landed on the ground and that translated into extra time spent in finding weapons and getting organized to fight. The last parachutists also might find themselves landing outside the drop zone in woods or water, either of which could easily result in death or serious injury.
When Headquarters planners first began evaluating the idea of creating Marine parachute units, the Corps possessed just two planes suitable for tactical jumping, the pair of Douglas R2D-1s (Military version of the DC-2) of Utility Squadron 1 (VMJ-1) in Quantico (Virginia). Its two Wright engines generated 710 horsepower, lifted the plane’s maximum gross weight of 18.200 pounds, and pushed it to a top speed of 210 miles per hour. It could accommodate approximately 10 parachutists. The capacity depended, of course, upon the amount of equipment to be dropped, since each cargo parachute for weapons and supplies took up the space of one man. At that time the Department of the Navy had on order seven of Douglas’ newer DC-5s, known as R3D-2s in the naval services. The Marine Corps was slated to receive four of these aircraft, which could hold about 15 jumpers. Finally, the Corps had its R3D-2s by mid-1941 and placed two each in VMJ-252 and 152, respectively located in Hawaii and Quantico. One of the old R2D-1s remained in service at the air station in San Diego.
The real workhorse of Allied airborne operations during World War II was based on Douglas’ DC-3 airliner, which made its first commercial flight in 1935. The Army Air Forces began buying a military version in 1940 and labeled it the C-47. The Department of the Navy acquired its first planes of this type, designated the R4D, during 1942. The Skytrain’s two Pratt and Whitney engines generated 1200 horsepower, lifted the plane’s gross weight of 29.000 pounds, and pushed it to a top speed of 227 miles per hour. It could carry up to 25 paratroopers out to a range of 1600 miles. The United States built over 10.000 C-47 variants during the war, with the naval services receiving 568 of them. In August 1943, the Marine Corps possessed about 80 of these planes. There were seven VMJ squadrons and an eighth on the drawing board, each with a projected authorization of one dozen R4Ds, but most of the units were brand new and still short of planes and crews. A number of the aircraft also were distributed in ones or twos to headquarters squadrons in support of various air groups. The heart of Marine transport capability rested at that point in Marine Air Group 25’s three squadrons in the South Pacific, a grand total of just 36 transports.
